[Nix-dev] Design Patterns for Achieving what Nix is Advertized for

[Martin Vahi]

I just wanted to say thank You for the answers.

As of 2015_11_28 it seems to me that one of the
main contributions of the Nix project is a systematic
and proper description of the problem that arises
from the fact that different software components
depend on each other and the fact that due to
data transfer bottleneck between CPU and RAM,
CPU and HDD, etc. it is not possible to
include all dependencies recursively to every project,
not to mention that RAM is a limited resource.

It also seems to me that there are multiple
approaches for trying to solve the problem,
a bit like the 2 Cold War era space programs
(Soviets and USA), where information was
"exchanged" with the help of spies,
except that in the open source world people
can just read the code or ask questions
from the developers of a "competing" project.

However, again, by pulling examples from the
Cold War era, in Soviet Union a de facto,
not necessarily de jure, prerequisite of a success
of a technical design was that drunk and sloppy
workers could get the thing to work/withstand-nature
even with their "working" style. I see a
parallel here with the packaging system design
and sloppy approach of package maintainers, who do
not take their time for testing things before
publishing. In the industry of mechanical things
the meticulous and hardworking people can write
the tests and the "drunk proletariat" just
reads the test results from the screen or from some
"test machine indicator lamp", but in the software
industry the "drunk proletariat" needs to write
the tests and everyone can see, where that has led us. :-D

I know that it sounds like a cliche and is
used a little bit out of context now, but
we are living in interesting times. :-D

Thank You for reading my letter
and thank You for the aswers.
Martin.Vahi at softf1.com  :-)



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